PAPER PULPIT: God plants new life in the soil of our souls
Notice these words of Jesus Christ from John 15: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine-dresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.”
When I was a child, it seemed that everyone in the community where I grew up had gardens filled with fruits and vegetables. Each type of garden produce was a bit different.
All the various types of garden plants seem to follow the same process in order to produce fruit. There must be the right amount of sunlight. There must be the right amount of moisture. The soil must be right. One needs to constantly work removing grass and weeds from the garden and keeping the process going across the spring and summer.
I remember once as a child, I made an attempt at growing peanuts one year. I planted about three or four hills of peanuts. Only one hill of peanuts survived in spite of me, and it produced a lot of peanuts that summer.
Our Heavenly Father is the Great Global Agricultural Engineer. God invented this process of growing plants — He created them and His creation is very good.
In much the same way, God is working in all of our lives in that He is planting new life in the soil of our souls. The Father has planted in each of us, in order to produce fruits that will grow and develop giving each of us a wonderful new life to enjoy in Him forevermore.
In order to mature in this wonderful new life, we must be connected/united in life with Jesus Christ our Lord. At the same time Jesus gives us the blessed Holy Spirit, who works building fruit in our lives throughout our lives. Notice the words of the Apostle Paul: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23, NKJV)
As fruit from the garden is nourishing for our lives, so is the fruit that is built in our hearts through the work of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus came to earth in order to reconcile God with mankind. Jesus came to reconcile mankind with one another. In order to see this begin to happen, there has to be a new heart in man. Man needs to become a new creation in Jesus.
Notice the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD, for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34, NKJV)
In Jesus, we find this wonderful new life with grace lavished upon us. In Jesus, we find reconciliation with God and with one another. In Jesus, we are made into a new creation.
Accept Jesus into your heart, be filled with the Spirit and forever be connected to the vine growing in the fruits of the Spirit.
Mark Nelson is a member of Grace Communion International.